Critical Review by Halbert E. Gulley

SOURCE: A review of The Hinge of Fate and Europe Unite: Speeches 1947 and 1948, in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 37, No. 2, April 1951, pp. 233.

In the following review, Gulley praises Churchill's eloquence as a speaker and a statesman.

The Hinge of Fate, volume four in Churchill's account of the second world war, covers the period from early 1942 to June, 1943, after victory in Africa. Like its predecessors, and, for that matter, in common with Churchill's tremendous work on the first world war, The World Crisis, this volume is valuable for its realistic analysis of what happened and why, its inclusion of official memoranda and correspondence, and its intimate glimpses of the ways in which the Prime Minister worked. The researcher must remember, of course, that the reporter was also an extremely active participant and cannot be capable of complete detachment. Nevertheless...